This would only make him a martyr, something that he had struggled for during his entire life, the Dhaka Tribune quoted Sumaiya as saying.

Quasem’s wife Khandaker Ayesha Khatun was asked by the prison authorities to meet her husband on Saturday afternoon.

The 63-year-old Jamaat-e-Islami leader and business tycoon’s atrocities during the 1971 Liberation War in Chittagong earned him the nickname “Bangali Khan”.

On Wednesday, a day after the Supreme Court upheld his death penalty for war crimes, Quasem had sought time to decide his next course of action.

He was sentenced to death in 2014 by the country’s specially constituted International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), for the atrocities he committed during the 1971 Liberation War as an Al-Badr commander.His last review petition was rejected by the Appellate Division of the apex court on Tuesday.